Red Gambit: Book One of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  It took clear, careful focus to shape the barrier so that it would protect the men and women behind the trucks while leaving the way clear for them to return fire. Once she’d conjured the construct, it became immediately apparent how hard it was going to be to maintain.

  Bullet after bullet smacked into her defenses, each one hitting like a heavy punch. Energy crackled through her body as she channeled from batteries to barrier. After the first few dozen bullets, she knew she couldn’t keep it up until the Resistance ship arrived.

  But she didn’t have a choice.

  She clenched her teeth. If she failed, people died—simple as that. She could do it. She had to.

  “Grenades!” someone cried.

  Her will nearly broke outright at the pair of dull thunks from the truck bed to her right. She snapped her eyes shut and sank deeper into her extended senses, reaching out to find the deadly little spheres that were about to blow half their line to paste.

  Splitting her mind so many ways was nearly insurmountable, but somehow she held the barrier in place, locked onto the grenades, and hurled them back toward the Reds.

  She opened her eyes just in time to see the grenades detonate in front of the enemy line and knock a couple of Reds from their feet. A hot rush of air surged against the barrier. Then it was gone.

  A fierce cheer went up from the Resistance line.

  “Well done,” Alaric said next to her.

  Had it been? Then maybe fate could be kind and get that damn ship there before she had to do it again.

  Even if there had been somewhere left to go, she doubted their trucks would run, given the pounding they were taking. And given the pounding she and her barrier were taking, there wouldn’t be much left for the ship to collect if it didn’t get here in the next few minutes.

  A soldier from the warehouse rushed over to Alaric. The nest was ready at the warehouse entrance, and the ship would be there in less than ten minutes.

  Cold dread wrapped its arms around her chest. Five minutes would be bad enough. Ten would be damn near impossible.

  But a ship was coming. And they were holding. All she had to do was keep holding.

  She growled wordlessly as three more pairs of headlights appeared at the far end of the row of warehouses.

  “Shit,” said Alaric next to her.

  “Incoming ship!” someone cried to their left.

  That was it. If that was the Red King—hell, if it was even his maid—they were screwed.

  The ship soared in over the left row of warehouses and slowed over the Reds. She squinted against the floodlights blazing down on their engagement and waited to glimpse their condemnation.

  Some thirty feet above them, Jarek’s armored figure sprang into the open air. Rachel tensed as he came to a brutally fast landing, but he turned his momentum into a ballistic roll and sprang to his feet without missing a beat.

  He moved into the ranks of the Reds with ruthless efficiency, slamming men into the trucks and batting others down with their own weapons. He kicked one Red hard enough that the guy took down two of his allies like a human missile.

  Rachel looked down the Resistance line. Every face—some confused, some awed, some frightened—was turned to Jarek as he dismantled what remained of the first batch of Red forces.

  She released her barrier and slumped against the truck, exhausted. From the looks of it, he hardly needed her help. Most of the Reds she could see were already on the ground, unconscious, dead, or too injured to fight. Jarek had scooped up an assault rifle and was mingling bullets with fists and kicks now that the remaining men were scattering.

  But when she spotted one of the Reds yanking the pin from a hand grenade, she jolted into action. She extended a hand and focused, catching the explosive only a few feet from the soldier’s hand. He stared slack-jawed at the hovering grenade for a full second before diving away, arms covering his head.

  The grenade detonated with a vicious boom, slamming his body against the pavement. She felt the shock wave as a warm gust of air on her rain-soaked face.

  Jarek came flying over the truck in an impossible leap that ended with a hard kick to one Red’s sternum. He threw the Red’s partner into the side of the nearest truck hard enough to visibly rock it.

  To the left, another Red was rounding the closest truck, his rifle leveled at the distracted Resistance line.

  Alaric wasn’t so distracted. His rifle barked, and the Red collapsed to the pavement.

  Automatic fire roared out from the other side of the Red’s truck. Rachel jumped as several slugs slammed to a halt on the field of her catcher, bringing a sudden chill made all the worse by the rain soaking through her very being. Before she could force her weary mind to respond, the Resistance line had gunned the shooter down.

  And then silence—or at least what seemed like silence after the raging firefight.

  Thick rain fell to the pavement. Archaic gasoline truck engines rumbled in the Reds’ now-empty trucks.

  The peace was only momentary. Gunfire erupted from further down the warehouse row as the incoming Reds opened up on Jarek’s ship, which Al had been using to run interference. The ship veered up and around, heading back toward them.

  “You guys can say it,” Jarek called, his voice amplified through Fela’s speakers. “You’re happy as shit to see us right now.”

  Everyone stared dumbly except for maybe Alaric, who didn’t deign to dignify that with a response. Al brought the ship to hover over Jarek, and Pryce appeared on the open ramp, lugging that ridiculously large sword Jarek kept on board.

  “Incoming,” he called, tossing it down.

  Jarek caught the monstrous weapon with one hand. Even with Fela’s help, it couldn’t have been easy, but he absorbed the sword’s momentum smoothly and strapped the sheath to Fela’s back. “Let’s move, people! Get to the ship! We’ve got an angry green monster on the way.”

  Al swung the ship around and settled it behind the Resistance line with a slight metallic groan.

  Jarek easily hurdled the truck line to land behind Rachel and Alaric.

  “I know you’re happy to see me,” he said, clearly to her.

  Of course she was glad to see him. But she wasn’t about to say it. She rolled her eyes at Fela’s faceplate and the big, stupid grin she knew lay underneath. They had about thirty seconds before the Reds would be on them in force again, and she didn’t want to inflate his head so much that he floated away and left them to get out of there on their own.

  His faceplate slid open to reveal him eyeing her with curiosity. “How many bullets did you just stop, Goldilocks?”

  She must look as bad as she felt. She shrugged.

  “HQ says five minutes on that ship,” someone called.

  He cocked his head. “No working ships, huh, Mikey?”

  Michael gave a helpless shrug. “That part was true yesterday.”

  “We can’t fit everyone in your ship with the device,” Alaric said. “Gonna have to hold them until—”

  A metallic thud sounded from the top of the warehouse. All eyes cut upward just as a ship soared past, blinding them with powerful floodlights. There was a second dark blur of motion above them, and then the cab of the lead Resistance truck imploded. A figure sliced down directly into the groaning metal and shattering glass, unaffected by the violence of the impact.

  A figure with a single fiery-red eye.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jarek had to give it to Alaric, the old cowboy was as fast as he was unshakable. While the rest of the Resistance line was busy jumping out of their skins or falling to their asses in surprise, Alaric raised his rifle in a smooth motion and unloaded the remainder of his mag on the Red King.

  The carbine packed enough of a punch that the King couldn’t ignore it outright. He roared and lashed out from the twisted ruin of the truck cab. Alaric threw himself back fast enough that the swipe only caught the tip of his rifle.

  Jarek darted forward as Alaric stumbled back. The bullets might not have s
eriously damaged the raknoth, but they’d rattled him enough that he couldn’t avoid Jarek’s flying kick.

  The kick drove the King from his perch down to the pavement on the other side of the truck, where he rolled to his feet to face them. Overhead, his ship descended and rotated to reveal several Reds aiming assault rifles at them from the open hatch in the ship’s breast.

  “Hold fire!” the Red King bellowed.

  That was unexpected. Jarek kept his rifle trained loosely on the King.

  The raknoth looked less beastly now than he had at Pryce’s, nearly human again but for the glowing red eye. That eye seemed to be directed past him.

  He followed the raknoth’s gaze to what could only be the nest, floating out of the warehouse propelled by Rachel’s raised hand.

  What the hell was she—

  Oh.

  He turned back to the King with his best nonchalant grin.

  “The nest,” the Red King said, his expression betraying his tension. “Walk away now, and we will give you the night before resuming our quarrel.”

  Jarek shot Rachel a quick wink. “Is it just me, boys, or does it feel like ol’ One-Eye’s scared his baby might get caught in the crossfire? What would happen, Red? Would we get to see this doomsday you keep telling us about?”

  “Jarek Slater.” The Red King growled the name as if it were a curse. “You do not comprehend the destruction you toy with.”

  He spread his hands. “That’s kinda the point. You wouldn’t ask the fat kid to keep an eye on your cupcakes, would you?”

  “What?”

  “You know, the—ah, never mind. Not the point.”

  “I tire of this game, Jarek Slater. What is your point?”

  The point was that they needed to buy time until the Resistance ship showed up. The only problem was it was hard to say which side benefited more from the standstill. They needed the Resistance ship to get everyone out, but they also had to still be alive when it showed up for that to matter. Every second they stood here was another second more of the Red army could show up.

  “Scanners detect incoming, sir,” Al said in his ear, right on cue. “A ship and two more trucks, likely from the Red Fortress.”

  He cursed himself for having even thought it. So maybe stalling wasn’t the way to go.

  “The point is that it doesn’t seem like such a hot idea to hand over a weapon of mass destruction to the guys that blew the freaking world up with weapons of mass destruction.”

  The three truckloads of fresh Reds were now squared up behind the King. Past the armed men hovering above, the lights of a second ship appeared in the distance.

  The Red King sniffed. At first, Jarek thought it was a conversational gesture, but then the raknoth sniffed again, investigating some scent.

  “Fetch Jay Pryce from that ship,” the King said. “Kill these imbeciles, and—”

  “Hey!” Jarek shouted, determined to keep the Red King’s attention.

  He got it.

  The King went from perfect ease one second to a hurtling, raknoth-shaped missile the next. Jarek leaped backward and brought the butt of his commandeered rifle down on the King’s back as the raknoth caught him in a tackle around the waist. It didn’t stop the King from driving him to the ground several yards behind the Resistance line.

  The breath left his lungs as he hit the pavement with who knew how many hundreds of pounds of angry raknoth on top of him.

  The King loosed a ferocious roar in his face. Al closed Jarek’s faceplate for him as he responded with a fist in the raknoth’s darkening face.

  The King shook it off, clamped a hand over Jarek’s faceplate, and muscled his head to the side, raising his other hand to strike.

  An invisible truckload of force slammed into the King, knocking him off of Jarek. Jarek kipped to his feet, not sparing the second to thank Rachel for the save. He leveled his rifle at the raknoth and emptied the magazine.

  The bark of the rifle was like a match to a keg of gunpowder. Both sides of the tense standoff opened fire in a rumbling cacophony that split the rainy night sky.

  “Fools!” the Red King cried, catching his balance and starting forward. “Watch the nest!”

  If the Red gunfire died down, it was hard to tell beneath the fury the Resistance line was laying down. A second Red ship was sweeping in now. The Red King’s ship spewed out a shower of sparks and lurched drunkenly.

  Jarek caught a glimpse of Rachel lowering her staff, her face white as a sheet, and then he squared off with the approaching raknoth.

  The King had eyes (or eye, rather) only for the nest, but that didn’t stop him from taking a swipe at Jarek as he charged past. Jarek caught the blow on his empty rifle and delivered a few choice elbow strikes before darting back. The King eagerly followed, and he slammed the rifle into the raknoth’s head like a baseball bat.

  The blow jarred the King, but not enough to stop him. He caught Jarek around the waist and drove in, forcing Jarek to furiously backpedal toward the Resistance line just to keep his feet. In a few steps, they’d slam straight into the trucks, probably killing whoever happened to be in their way. He couldn’t get the leverage to break their momentum.

  So instead, he let himself topple backward. At the last moment, he wrapped the Red King in a bear hug and jumped up and back as hard as he could.

  They took off like a misshapen cannonball, arcing over the Resistance truck line toward the Red armada.

  “Roll, sir, roll!” Al barked.

  He didn’t hesitate. He grabbed fistfuls of the Red King’s stupid long coat and twisted his weight around their shared axis.

  They spun through the air, rotating just enough that the King was leading when they slammed into the hood of one of the Reds’ big transport trucks.

  The edge of the hood caught the raknoth’s back with a force and angle that would’ve severed a human spinal cord three times over. Jarek wasn’t even sure the bastard had a spinal cord to sever, but the King didn’t seem to be in too bad of shape as they tumbled to the pavement.

  A ground-shaking crash jerked their attention to the left. The Red King’s ship had gone down, its engines spitting sparks and black smoke. Another point for Rachel.

  Jarek rolled over his left shoulder and onto his feet. The King rose and followed, now in full scaly-green-monster mode.

  They circled like boxers until the King tired of the caution. Jarek dodged one swipe, dipped another, and stepped forward to block a third while driving a punch into the King’s scaly mug.

  The King caught Jarek’s wrist and dragged him along as he stumbled back. What began as a stumble turned into an attack as the raknoth yanked him by one wrist into a brutal clothesline.

  The stars cleared from his vision enough just in time for him to parry a vicious stomp aside with his elbow. Panic swelled in his chest. He needed space. He needed to get his damn sword out.

  He twisted around on the pavement and planted a hard kick into the King’s hip. The raknoth roared and staggered back several steps.

  More importantly, the reactionary force sent Jarek sliding several yards across the rain-soaked pavement.

  At the end of the slide, he kipped to his feet and drew the Big Whacker.

  The sword the King had snapped in two at Pryce’s hadn’t exactly been a wispy foil, but it paled in comparison to the Big Whacker. The Whacker was like an ax blade that just kept going. The thing weighed about twenty freaking pounds. Without Fela, it was useless for anything faster-paced than chopping firewood.

  But with Fela, the Whacker was really good at hacking big things to tiny pieces.

  Jarek swung the behemoth blade through a couple of revolutions and held it at the ready as the Red King stalked toward him, rumbling a low growl. The raknoth’s features had grown completely reptilian. His hair had disappeared beneath scaly hide, and his mouth had elongated into something more like a snout.

  Jarek realized the fighting had quieted around them. The second Red ship was hanging back after Rachel’s atta
ck on the first, hovering over the trucks waiting in line to deliver their troops. The Resistance and Red troops were still exchanging fire here and there, but nothing like before.

  Maybe they were scared of catching him and their King in the crossfire. More likely, they were waiting to see how the heavyweight rumble panned out.

  “I believe the Resistance ship is nearly here, sir,” Al said quietly in his ear. “I recommend we leave with all haste.”

  “No shit,” he murmured. “Just gonna whack the one-eyed monster first.”

  “Charming, sir. I’ll tell Pryce to get the others moving.”

  “Wonderful.”

  All he had to do now was kill the Red King or hold him and his army off while the ragtag, wounded Resistance team got their shit together and ran for it. Piece of cake.

  The King eyed Jarek’s blade, fangs bared in what might’ve been a predatory smile. “Did you not learn your lesson last time, Jarek Slater?”

  He shrugged. “Slow learner, I guess.”

  The King’s smile faltered. He jerked his head up, catching a scent or a sound.

  “Here they come, sir,” Al said.

  “Time to shake it, people!” Jarek yelled.

  He plunged toward the Red King, sweeping his sword in a horizontal cut. The raknoth ducked the blow, and Jarek sidestepped his counter. Behind him, a few hopeful shouts went up from the Resistance line as the Resistance ship came soaring over the warehouses.

  He didn’t have time to celebrate. He ducked a particularly brutal haymaker and rolled past the follow-up swipe. He felt the King lunge after him, and he planted the Whacker so he could pivot into an upward diagonal cut from the roll.

  It wasn’t the strongest of strikes, but the blade met the King’s incoming swipe and tore through the clawed digits of his left hand.

  The cold fear in his chest gave way to primal joy as the King staggered back with a furious roar. Was that surprise on the raknoth’s reptilian features? Horror? It sure as hell wasn’t calm confidence anymore.

  Jarek bellowed a wordless challenge and pressed the advantage, whirling the heavy blade in a great arc and stomping after the King to leverage his next swing down from high left.